With the rapid advance of electronic technology, wide varieties of electronic devices have been developed and have become indispensable to people in their daily lives. As the popularity of electronic devices grows, users also have greater demands on their electronic devices, especially on the processing speed and size.
For instance, the execution speed of computer platforms has increased from 500 Mhz a few years ago to 2000 Mhz or more now. Notebook computers have become the mainstream because of their size advantage. On servers, the blade server has become the mainstream also because of its small size.
Refer to FIG. 1 for a case interior used in a conventional electronic device. It contains a mainboard 20 and a power supply 10, which provides electric power for the mainboard 20. The power supply 10 is connected to a power connector 22 of the mainboard 20 through a cable 12, which is coupled with a connector. The power supply 10 also provides the power needed for other peripheral devices (such as optical disk drives) through other cables.
Because the power supply 10 has to provide electric power to the electronic device for operation, it generates a great amount of heat. The heat is generally dispersed by an air fan 30 installed on the rear side of the power supply 10. The air fan generates cooling air to accelerate heat dispersion through air vents 40 to prevent the power supply 10 from overheating and being damaged.
As the location of the power supply 10 may be far from the air vents 40, the heat generated could be spread throughout the entire case, overheating the mainboard 20. The overheated condition affects processing speed of the electronic device and is not acceptable. To overcome the aforesaid problems, some manufacturers try to install a wind fender to confine and direct the cooling air generated by the air fan 30 to the air vents 40.
Refer to FIGS. 2A and 2B for a first and a second embodiment of the wind fender now being used to direct the cooling air.
Refer to FIG. 2A for a wind fender installed on a mainboard. The wind fender 50 is installed between an air fan 30 and air vents 40 to direct cooling air generated by the air fan 30 to the air vents 40 to dispel heat generated by the power supply 10 to outside the mainboard 20. As the power supply 10 requires a cable to transmit electric power to the mainboard 20 and other devices, a space is reserved between the wind fender 50 and the air fan 30 to allow the cable 12 and an audio wire 24 to pass through to connect to the mainboard 20 or other devices. The reserved space restricts the wiring layout of the cable 12 and the audio wire 24. Some cable 12 and audio wire 24 are made with a fixed length. The constraint mentioned above could make some devices beyond the reach of the cable 12 or audio wire 24, and result in some devices and speakers being unable to receive electric power from the power supply 10.
FIG. 2B illustrates an improved air fender proposed by some vendors to overcome the constraint of cable wiring previously discussed. A wind fender 60 has a notch 62 according a preset wiring layout of cables 12 and 24 (such as a power cord and an audio wire) of a power supply 10 so that the cables can pass through and be confined to desired locations to match the mainboard 20. However, the notch 62 can confine cable movements only in the X axis, but not in the Y axis. Some portion of the cables 12 or 24 escape the preset layout position and scatter on the mainboard 20. Such a situation affects cooling or assembly of the mainboard 20.
Hence in the present design that focuses on performance and size, how to disperse heat from inside of the case and lay the cables according to a selected layout to improve cooling and assembly of the mainboard are issues remaining to be resolved.